Leave it to Fox News contributor Sarah Palin.
Hardly a week goes by without the half-term governor of Alaska taking a swipe at the “lamestream” media. Worse yet, her assault on the press rarely if ever results in a noticeable change in the tenor of her media coverage.
As Media Matters' Eric Boehlert has noted:
We've simply never seen an instance in modern American politics where a high-profile political figure was able to not only hide from the press, but advertise the fact that he/she was going to boycott the press. (And do it with glee!) And then have the press roll over and accept the categorical rejection. I mean c'mon, reporters now routinely type of Palin's Facebook notes as news.
Does anybody honestly think that if, say, after his 2000 election loss, Al Gore basically refashioned himself into some sort of relentless attack hack, a kind of whirling dervish of partisan misinformation, and positioned himself for a possible run in 2004, and Gore refused to answer questions from the Beltway press for more than a year, that an ABC News host would try to cajole Gore into appearing on his show?
Yesterday, Palin was back to poking the media (something she must have learned on Facebook), this time warning her Montana audience to be careful because reporters may be in their midst. As Missoula Editor's Sherry Devlin writes:
Second: Contrary to former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's warning to the standing-room-only crowd at this afternoon's Teen Challenge fundraiser in Missoula, the media did not “sneak in” to her speech. We were not there as “moles,” in her words.
Third: I only mention this because that sort of talk – “Be careful. There may be some media that sneaked into the room.” – is intended to create distrust of the professional journalists in this city and all across the country who take their jobs very seriously and work hard to accurately and fairly report the news.
Previously: